decided to be the right path, it does not mean it will be implemented: someone

decided to be the right path, it does not mean it will be implemented: someone

must have the time and will to implement it.

must have the time and will to implement it.

+

+

(This content originally by Carlos Woelz from http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/www/areas/quality/develop/policies/index.php?annotate=286645&pathrev=286645)

Revision as of 13:39, 16 August 2010

THIS IS NOT CURRENTLY AN OFFICIAL KDE POLICY

Most of KDE contributors are volunteers, either programmers, artists, writers or translators. A traditional organization of hierarchy in this case is difficult to maintain and inefficient. But there are some rules and principles that help coordinating the efforts, and it is fundamental to know them.

The Power Of The Doer

In a volunteer project, the way to make something happen is present a concrete
solution, better yet if followed with an implementation. For example, pointing
out that KDE context help for dialogs is incomplete will not be useful, people
already know that. Writing context help for dialogs and sending it to the
maintainer is the only practical way to change this reality. There is also a lot
of room for different approaches in the implementation, as the maintainer is
likely to accept something he does not consider the best possible solution if he
judges it is an improvement. Programming issues are decided by programmers,
documentation issues are solved by documentation writers and so on.

The Maintainer Role And The Decision Process

The maintainer is the guy who formally takes responsibility for an
application or library. But it does not mean that he takes all decisions. For
controversial issues, the general decision is made by voting. To have a voice
in the voting process, it is necessary to be a current contributor, with
relevant past contributions. Anyone can try to influence the decision process
by presenting thoughtful arguments and evidence. And even when something is
decided to be the right path, it does not mean it will be implemented: someone
must have the time and will to implement it.